Share this product

Description

Eastwood plays boxing trainer, Frankie Dunn, a man who has become emotionally locked up and unable to allow himself to get close to anyone since a painful estrangement from his daughter. Frankie runs an LA gym with ex-boxer, Eddie Scrap-Iron (Morgan Freeman) who narrates the story.

Into Frankie's life walks Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a young woman whose life has been a constant struggle but who is determined to be a boxer - with Frankie as her trainer. Frankie tells her she is too old and that he does not train girls - but by sheer force of will, she wins him over and he takes her on.

Their relationship is both confrontational and inspiring for both as they head towards a championship match at which point tragedy strikes and the two discover that in each other they have been able to overcome the losses of their pasts.

Best Picture Oscar Winner 2004.

Review

"Clint Eastwood's 25th film as a director, Million Dollar Baby stands proudly with Unforgiven and Mystic River as the masterwork of a great American filmmaker. In an age of bloated spectacle and computer-generated effects extravaganzas, Eastwood turns an elegant screenplay by Paul Haggis (adapted from the book Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner by F.X. Toole, a pseudonym for veteran boxing manager Jerry Boyd) into a simple, humanitarian example of classical filmmaking, as deeply felt in its heart-wrenching emotions as it is streamlined in its character-driven storytelling. In the course of developing powerful bonds between "white-trash" Missouri waitress and aspiring boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), her grizzled, reluctant trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), and Frankie's best friend and training-gym partner Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman), 74-year-old Eastwood mines gold from each and every character, resulting in stellar work from his well-chosen cast. Containing deep reserves of love, loss, and the universal desire for something better in hard-scrabble lives, Million Dollar Baby emerged, quietly and gracefully, as one of the most acclaimed films of 2004, released just in time to earn an abundance of year-end accolades, all of them well-deserved."--Jeff Shannon

Special Features:

Born to Flight - An in depth look at women in the ring

Producer's Round 15 - Producers Al Ruddy, Tom Rosenberg and Paul Haggis tell the story of how the book by F.X. Toole "Rope Burns" made it to the screen

James Lipton Takes on Three - In depth interviews with Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank the day after the Oscars